Joel Miller

Risk Terrain Modeling: Brokering Criminological Theory and GIS Methods for Crime Forecasting

The research presented here has two key objectives. The first is to apply risk terrain modeling (RTM) to forecast the crime of shootings. The risk terrain maps that were produced from RTM use a range of contextual information relevant to the opportunity structure of shootings to estimate risks of future shootings as they are distributed throughout a geography. The second objective was to test the predictive power of the risk terrain maps over two six‐month time periods, and to compare them against the predictive ability of retrospective hot spot maps. Results suggest that risk terrains provide a statistically significant forecast of future shootings across a range of cut points and are substantially more accurate than retrospective hot spot mapping. In addition, risk terrain maps produce information that can be operationalized by police administrators easily and efficiently, such as for directing police patrols to coalesced high‐risk areas.

Practitioner Compliance With Risk/Needs Assessment Tools A Theoretical and Empirical Assessment

This study examines practitioners’ compliance and noncompliance with risk/needs assessment tools, using a national survey of frontline community corrections staff. Focusing on respondents required to complete tools and make decisions based on them, analysis showed that tools were mostly filled out when required, but decisions were not always based on the tool result. Latent class analysis suggests about half of the tool-using subgroup were “substantive” compliers who completed tools carefully and honestly and tended to use them for decision making. The remaining tool users were “formal” in their compliance: filling out the tools, but often making decisions that did not correspond with tool results, and in some cases even manipulating the information included in them. Multivariate analysis suggests that practitioners’ belief in risk/needs tools, agency monitoring and training, perceptions of agency procedural justice, and agencies’ projected confidence in their local risk/need tool may help explain patterns of compliance and noncompliance.

Contemporary Modes of Probation Officer Supervision: The Triumph of the “Synthetic” Officer?

This article considers the continued relevance of law enforcement and social worker roles to probation officer practice, a central motif in community corrections scholarship. It also considers how these traditional functions are integrated into community-oriented supervision practices, increasingly emphasized in policy circles. Using Latent Class Analysis of data from a national community corrections survey, a four-class typology of probation officers was developed, based on their supervision practices. While classes vary according to the intensity of supervision, particularly in the engagement of third parties (family, community, and the police), there are no classes that correspond either to law enforcers or to social workers. Rather, officer classes are all “synthetic”—combining law enforcement and social work functions together in the same strategy. The analysis identifies a number of predictors of membership in more intensive supervision classes. These relate to ideological orientations, caseload characteristics, officer demographics, and agency progressiveness.

Can Effective Policing Also Be Respectful? Two Examples in the South Bronx

Crime in New York City declined dramatically following the introduction of a set of new police strategies in 1994. The number of civilian complaints against the police, however, rose dramatically after the new strategies were implemented. These two trends, moving in opposite directions, led many to speculate that the inevitable price of the dramatic drop in crime is an aggressive police force that generates more anger and resentment. This case study refutes the inevitability of a link between aggressive policing and citizen complaints of misconduct. In at least two neighborhoods in the Bronx, large reductions in crime occurred while complaints against officers declined below 1993. We examine several possible explanations for the decline in civilian complaints, analyzing statistical data and interviewing more than two dozen police officers, from the precinct commanders to the officers on patrol. We conclude that the most likely explanation for the decline in citizen complaints in these two precincts was efforts made by precinct commanders to promote respectful policing and change a police culture that tolerated citizen complaints.

Probation Supervision and the Control of Crime Opportunities: An Empirical Assessment

Mainstream accounts of community corrections supervision emphasize rehabilitation on the one hand, and surveillance and control on the other.This article, however, examines whether probation supervision is used to reduce the exposure of offenders to crime opportunities. Using data from a national community corrections survey, it finds that opportunity-focused supervision (OFS) practices are, to varying degrees, common. Most OFS activities coalesce around a distinct strategy that involves harnessing efforts of potential handlers, place managers, and capable guardians to help steer offenders away from crime opportunities, deployed somewhat independently of conventional supervision strategies. Predictors of the OFS strategy are different from other supervision approaches, and include low caseloads, juvenile supervision, and working in an office serving a rural area.

Immigration and Integration: Perceptions of Community Policing Among Members of Six Ethnic Communities in Central Queens, New York City

There is some evidence, based on past research, that community policing has not been as successful (in terms of awareness, participation, and impact) in Black and Latino communities as in White communities. We believed that there may be even less awareness of community policing in ethnic communities containing high proportions of recent immigrants. We conducted an investigation into the extent to which awareness of community policing had penetrated immigrant communities. From a multi-ethnic neighborhood in Queens, New York with a high proportion of foreign-born residents, we surveyed representative samples from six different ethnic groups. Two of the communities were well established and integrated into the citys political structure. The other four communities were composed largely of recent immigrants and had not yet developed a strong sense of political empowerment. Respondents were asked about awareness of community policing, sources of awareness, participation in community policing activities, and suggestions for improving police—community relations. Respondents from the long-etablished ethnic communities were far more likely to be aware of community policing than respondents in the recently established communities. The former respondents were also more likely to have participated in community policing activities. Increasing foot patrols and holding more meetings with the community were seen as the most effective means of improving police—community relations, especially among recently established Hispanic communities.

Measuring Influences on Public Opinion of the Police Using Time-Series Data: Results of a Pilot Study

This article reports on the outcome of a pilot study that used time-series data to examine both the indirect effects on community opinion of police-public contacts as citizens recount their experiences to friends and family and the effects of negative news coverage of the police on public opinion. In the 9-month period of data collection, there was sufficient variation neither in customer satisfaction with voluntary police contacts nor in public opinion, providing strong clues about the relationship between the two. There was, however, notable variation in negative news coverage of the police in the face of stable public opinion, suggesting some resistance among the public to its influence. This article concludes with reflections and ideas for future research efforts to measure changes to public opinion and satisfaction using surveys.

Racism and Police Stops: Adapting US and British Debates to Continental Europe

Findings from an international research programme on police stops in Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain are reviewed in the context of British and US debates on racism in police stops, and in particular the concepts of ethnic/racial profiling, disproportionality and institutional racism. The research uses surveys and qualitative interviews to examine the experiences of Roma in all three countries and of immigrants in Spain. The article finds evidence of ethnic/racial profiling in police decisions to stop. However, this does not translate into aggregate ethnic disparities in stops (disproportionality) in Bulgaria and Hungary where it can be measured. This is because ethnic disparities are driven also by structural factors that are independent of ethnic profiling. Different kinds of institutional racism are also suggested by the poorer treatment of ethnic minority populations during stops and by evidence of under-policing of Roma-only communities in Bulgaria.

Impact of Situational Factors on Survey Measured Fear of Crime

This article examines the influence of dynamic situational factors on responses to fear of crime questions in a street survey carried out in the city of Malaga, Spain. Pedestrians in two popular and well‐defined commercial centres were asked about their assessments of crime rates and their fear of victimisation during the day within the two geographical areas. Multi‐variate analysis suggests that the time of day, the physical character of the street in which the interview took place, and perhaps also the flow of people, each had effects on at least one of the two fear of crime measures. The research reinforces the view that survey measurement of attitudes, including fear of crime, has important sources of instability. It also draws attention to a neglected class of variables potentially important in structuring survey measured attitudes.

Home Nodes, Criminogenic Places, and Parolee Failure: Testing an Environmental Model of Offender Risk

This article examines whether potentially criminogenic places (including bars, liquor stores, restaurants, public transport hubs, drug markets, and more), located within a 1,240-feet radius of parolees’ residences (the home “node”), predict their rearrest or revocation. Taking these features into account, in addition to individual traits and behaviors, might pave the way for more accurate risk assessment that could help make supervision sensitive to place-based risks. However, multivariate survival analysis of 1,632 parolees released to Newark during July 2007 to June 2009 found little evidence that these factors increased the risk of failure. Successful operationalization of environmental risk will probably need to incorporate more detailed measures of parolees’ routine activities, including the settings and paths they frequent beyond their home environment.